Arizona Moon

by J. M. Graham

  The VC often marked mined trails with subtle changes to the environment meant to warn those initiated to the signs that the route was lethal. The jungle was a place of nuance, easily read by those living there, so the signals were designed to mimic the natural texture but with a twist that moved them just beyond the likelihood of normal occurrence. A few stones stacked in an impromptu pyramid, twigs positioned on the ground pointing out the deadly way, a branch snapped down at an intersection of trails dissuaded those native to the cause from taking the wrong path. But the cautions were always from nature, blending into the surroundings, easily noticed only by those in the know. This was different.

  Franklin crept forward, the rest of his fire team covering the flanks, until he was close enough to see the folded cardboard tent sitting on the boulder like a dinner place card waiting for an invited guest. He crept forward and reached out to the little folded piece, touching it gingerly as though it might bite. Unfolding the crease, he looked at the cryptic message written in pencil in block letters. He turned it on its side, then back again, as though a different angle might give it a sense that wasn’t apparent at first glance.

  The second man back tore his nervous eyes away from the trees long enough to eye the point. “Franklin, what is it?”

  Franklin passed him the note, never taking his eyes from the jumble of stone that held the promise of defensible ground, and was therefore the most likely spot from which to launch an ambush.

  The second man looked at the note with the same befuddled expression.

  “Pass that back to Blackwell,” Franklin said, peering over the big stone to the chewed footprints winding up the mountain through the jumble.

  The note made its way back through the squad, stopping in Middleton’s hands.

  “Why are we stopped?” Sergeant Blackwell said, stepping forward.

  “Point found this.” Middleton held up the folded meal flap, supple from being handled wet.

  Blackwell took the darkening piece of cardboard. Getting a sign from his people lost in the bush was more than he could have hoped for, but this fell short of anything he might have dreamed. “Went after his honor?” he said, his voice rising in question.

  All Middleton could do was shrug and be thankful that he was not the one responsible for deciphering the odd message.

  Sergeant Blackwell held the note and stared past it into the trees, trying to see nothing, freeing his brain to work out not the meaning of the scribble but the implications of the note’s very existence. A wry smile worked its way onto his face. Captives would not be in a position to leave notes behind. His people were free. But any note left to be found should at least make sense. The fact that he held it in his hand, though it erased a major concern, raised more questions than it answered. If they were being chased, why didn’t the pursuers find the note? If they weren’t running, where were they? What the hell did the note mean? He looked back at the questioning faces behind him. “Hey, pogue. You’re a paper pusher. This mean anything to you?”

  Pusic moved past Bronsky and his radio, trying not to step off the path onto unknown ground, and took the wet cardboard from the sergeant’s hand. He turned it from the turkey side to the pencil printing inside the fold. He looked to the sergeant’s face, then back to the note. He was skeptical about being included in the workings of the squad and hesitant to proffer an opinion, but it didn’t matter. It couldn’t have meant less to him if it had been written in hieroglyphics. He could feel Bronsky squeezing close, peering over his shoulder, so he held the surface so the radioman could see.

  “I’ll tell you one thing. Reach wouldn’t leave no dumb-ass note like that for us to find,” Bronsky said, punctuating the statement with a twist of his mouth that said something was being left unsaid.

  Pusic and the radioman exchanged knowing glances. “The Chief,” they said in unison, a duet without a pleasing harmony, Pusic’s part more a question than an assertion.

  The sergeant took the note back and looked at it with a new appreciation. It still had no meaning to him, but he could see the hand of the Chief in it.

  Middleton whistled from where he squatted in the bush. “Franklin wants somebody in charge to come up. You want to flip for it?”

  Brushing past the kneeling squad, Blackwell looked down on the squad leader. “You don’t have the stones or the stripes to even ask that,” he said, weaving his way toward the point fire team with Bronsky following, the radioman’s loyalties wavering but finally settling comfortably with the precept of rank and its attendant privileges.

  Middleton looked back at the office clerk, who was bent at the waist, trying to look unobtrusive without actually getting down in the mud. “How do you like it so far, pogue?”

  Sergeant Blackwell worked his way to the front where Franklin leaned against the big rock, making sure the impenetrable bulk of it was between him and the slew of rocks above.

  “Where did this come from?” the sergeant said holding out the note.

  Franklin tapped the top of the stone. “It was sitting right here, like it was waiting for us to come along.”

  “No other sign of Reach or the Chief?”

  Franklin wiped his face with a forearm etched with healing scratches that showed pink on his brown skin. “Somebody squeezed up through those rocks,” he said pointing to the path around the lichen-covered boulder. “And that there looks like a U.S.-issue boot print to me.”

  Sergeant Blackwell looked up the mountain. “You think our people are up there?” he said, speaking as much to himself as to anyone else. Franklin shrugged. The sergeant had never seriously asked his opinion before, and when the rank seemed pissed, you walked on eggshells.

  Blackwell looked down at the note in his hand. “Some think the Chief wrote this.”

  “I know he did,” Franklin said. “He was telling me about his honor yesterday.”

  “What about his honor? What the hell does this mean?” The sergeant shook the note, making it flop.

  Franklin felt put on the spot. “I don’t know what that note means, but he said he carries his honor in that bag he wears around his neck.”

  The sergeant folded the note and stuffed it into the breast pocket on his flak jacket. “I think I’m gonna regret not shooting that jackass.”

  Bronsky stayed back a bit, leaning forward, hands on thighs, positioning the weight of the radio over his bent knees. The congregation at the big rock was growing too large and might attract a strike of righteous lightning, and he didn’t want to be in its path.

  The sergeant looked up at the scrambled stones and the path through them. “Franklin, take your team up there and have a look, but be quick.”

  The three Marines dug in their toes and climbed through the rockslide, pushing their rifles at any chink in the stone that promised a hiding place. They were back in minutes, dropping down with heavy plods, moving with none of the vigilance they demonstrated on the way up.

  Sergeant Blackwell watched them come, surprised at how disappointed he was that they were alone. “Nothing, huh?” he said.

  Franklin looked back at the massive slide as though refreshing a memory, or making one. “There’s a natural blind up there built like a stone bunker. I think our guys spent some time in it.”

  The rush of projectiles far above the trees ignited the birds into shrill protests that clashed with the rumble of echoes from An Hoa. The sounds seemed to add an increased urgency to the passing of every second.

  “You just think they were there?” the sergeant asked.

  Franklin held out the top half of a paper envelope with “pre-sweetened” printed across it. “Unless the gooks are drinking Kool-Aid now, I’d say they were there for sure.”

  The passing rounds struck the mountain in brutal succession. “Let’s get going, Franklin,” the sergeant said, crumpling the packet top and tossing it aside.

  Franklin looked back at the men crouched on the trail. “Which way?” he said.

  The sergeant hooked his thumb north toward
the noise. “Move it out, Marine.”

  One of the other fire team members pointed at the muddy path and Franklin knelt down for a closer look. “Sergeant,” he said, looking over his shoulder with a satisfied expression. “My man here says he thinks our people were the last ones over this ground.”

  Blackwell moved close so he could see. Bronsky couldn’t resist following. Curious faces hung over the muddy imprints, their attention directed by Franklin’s finger pointing at one boot print overlaying another. “That looks like a stateside boot impression to me,” Franklin said. “Who the hell is wearing statesides out here?”

  Blackwell could see the mark of a jungle boot half concealed under the crosshatched pattern of another foot. “My two strays are chasing the VC. What the hell is going on? Has everyone in this damned country gone crazy but me?”

  Franklin stood, sending his fire team ahead. “Maybe,” he said to the sergeant. “And we ain’t too sure about you anymore.”

  Sergeant Blackwell waved an arm to get the entire squad moving behind Franklin’s lead. Once a drill instructor at Parris Island, he often felt the need to lapse into a DI’s descriptive colloquialisms for recruits, “puke” and “turd” being among his favorites. But the young Marines past the trials of boot camp resented the characterizations as both insulting and inaccurate, so he made an honest effort to not invalidate his platoon with his words. “Son of a bitch,” he said, confident that no toes were tromped on unjustifiably.

  Halfway along the trampled path transecting the elongated gap in the trees, the parade of artillery rounds made their lethal hiss overhead and Strader began to run. The gap was bare. The only cover, the tree line ahead, seemed miles away. Having a clear view of the sky made him feel irrationally exposed, and he stretched his stride, trying to believe he could win an impossible race, the tortoise pitted against a hare with a muzzle velocity.

  The rounds began striking the mountain one after another, unevenly spaced, and he fought to stay upright on the shimmering ground. All stability seemed to have vanished from the solid platform that was the earth. The big projectiles of explosive steel pounded the mountain beyond where he could see, but he still felt their force compress the air in his ears and constrict his chest. Standing near the big guns when they fired was an experience that commanded awe. The power was impressive: the thud of the recoil, the jolt that stole all confidence in solid ground, the air shifting as though trying to get away. But being on the receiving end was a plunge into an inferno from Dante’s hellish imagination—an imagination complete with flames and heat and ear-rupturing noise and jagged shrapnel and disgorged earth. There was a fundamental disconnect between the experiences of the sending and the receiving, a psychological schism like seeing a listless tiger in a zoo and seeing a hungry one eyeing you on a jungle trail. Unable to maintain his balance, Strader dropped to his knees. When the first salvo ended he was up and running again through a lull that left only a threatening roar rebounding from the clouds.

  Nguyen drove Pham forward with a hand against his back, pushing him past those with heavier loads, not listening to the objections the younger man tossed back over his shoulder. Everyone knew that the American artillery would likely reach out with more. If the location of the first shot had been sanctioned, the ground behind them would be the target and they had to put as much distance between themselves and that unlucky real estate as they could. Even as they grunted and dug in their feet, the munitions searching them out could be heard growing ever louder in the air like angry hornets. Nguyen barked orders, driving them on. If any had the notion of ducking for cover again, he disabused them of that, the hiss of the oncoming rounds adding emphasis to his demands.

  The leading shot hit the mountain high on their left, deep in the trees. The ground jumped and the force of expanding air hit them like an atomic blast. Those who were knocked from their feet struggled up again as the second and third rounds struck high and behind. A fourth shot hit closer, back along the path. The explosions engulfed them like a living entity, sucking the air from their lungs and choking their throats. Shrapnel ripped the trees. The concussions spread in spherical shockwaves that shook the branches where their influences collided. Nguyen knew that the target coordinates had been changed from the initial spotter round, and that they were now in the kill zone. They could not stay here. The big guns would fire again, unloading death onto this place, and if they were here, they would die. He yelled with all the force he could muster without sounding panicked. He had to keep them together, solid to their purpose, and he had to keep them moving.

  They lurched forward through clouds of fragrant green confetti, the urgency to be gone and the threat of immediate death putting renewed strength in their efforts. Pham, staggering, looked back, but Nguyen waved him on with an impatient hand, not wanting the handicap of caring about this fledgling bird who could bury him with his needs.

  Once again they heard the rending of air above the trees foreshadowing a new onslaught of artillery rounds that were homing in on their very heartbeats. The new salvo slammed into the mountain, the explosions forcing the atmosphere away in concussive blasts that left burnt voids that sucked in the surrounding air, creating a storm of currents that pushed and pulled at the Vietnamese while the ground jolted under their feet. Their voices screamed in defiance, matching their futile sounds against the explosions as earth rained down on them in chunks, and they scrambled and crawled to get away, knowing they were in a race they could not win.

  26

  The Bird Dog pilot revved away from the mountain, turning his head only to watch the rounds find their spots. They punctured the canopy, exploding below the green surface and making the trees perform an unnatural dance. The blasts spread across the treetops in undulating waves. The shells struck unpredictably, the result of miniscule disparities in load and barrel condition in the weapons that sent them. Even the density of the air currents played a role in determining the specifics of their trajectories. Fire control radioed the new warning that rounds were on the way, and the pilot banked off to clear skies, keeping the implications of the big guns’ disparities in mind.

  Sergeant Blackwell barked over his shoulder to Bronsky, bent under his radio. “Get the LT. Quick.”

  Bronsky grabbed the handset from where it swung on his breast pocket and squeezed the plunger. “Golf Four to Golf One Actual,” he gasped. An unresponsive hiss returned. “Four to One Actual,” he repeated, economizing on words to save air better used to curse Clyde for being slow on the uptake. “Pick up, shithead,” he said, after first releasing the plunger to be sure that he wasn’t sending.

  Lieutenant Diehl’s voice cut through the static, terse and demanding. “One Actual.”

  Blackwell snatched the handset from Bronsky without ceremony. “Call off the guns, sir. Our runaways are in the zone.”

  “Roger that,” Diehl said into the mouthpiece, then turned to Clyde standing next to him, the coil of handset wire stretched between them. “Clyde, get me fire control,” he said, letting the coil retract the handset by tensile memory. Clyde looked back with a blank expression that the lieutenant easily read. “Turn around,” he said. The radioman turned, and Diehl spun the frequency knobs on the radio with deep clacks. “Go,” he said. In seconds Clyde had a reply. He held out the handset again. “Sir.” The lieutenant snatched it away. “This is Golf One Actual. Cease fire. Friendly troops at that coordinate. Stop that fire mission, now.”

  The Chief lay prostrate, hands clamped over his ears, trying to block the impacts of the rounds from pounding the bruised tissue in his skull. The ground under him jerked with each detonation, transferring the spasms through his body. He willed himself to shrink. The target area was close, so close that streaks of shrapnel ripped the leaves overhead. They fell to the earth all around him, curled into ugly fists by the heat. In the lull between salvos he pushed himself up onto his knees, still holding a hand over his damaged ear, which was replaying each throb like a reverberating drumbeat. Before he could sta
nd, fresh thunder cracks erupted ahead, and he curled into a fetal position and waited to meet the Great Spirit.

  Two rounds hit just behind where Nguyen estimated the column ended. Ears stinging, he stepped aside and waved his people past, refusing to acknowledge the fear in their eyes. The jungle lapsed into silence again, another lull as the enemy reloaded. He swung his arm frantically, desperate to take advantage. The high-pitched pealing in his head seemed to pass, and he heard a faint, guttural groan behind him, an animal sound, alien yet familiar, something recognized by primordial receptors deep in his brain that triggered alarms. Nguyen grabbed the last of the passing bearers, who was struggling under the bulk of the recoilless rifle. “Where is Co?” he asked, looking back where the trail twisted into the trees, his mind ticking off the ominous time gap between those ahead and those behind. The man shrugged and pushed on, concerned only with the assault on the physical space he occupied, wanting to move that space as far away as possible. The silence seemed filled with threat. Nguyen watched the empty path, tuning his ears to the ominous stillness in the sky.

  The last of the column left Nguyen where he stood, never looking back. Co and Sau and the heavy machine gun were somewhere back along the trail, bathed in the smell of burned air and shredded earth, waiting for the American gunners to blanket more of the mountain with steel. Nguyen wanted to call out. He even wanted to run back and find them, to admonish them for holding up the column, but the column had to be his focus. Sacrifices had to be made, and risks had to be avoided; no more regrets at not moving. His thoughts now were not for the men lost but for the men left.